I am in beautiful Charleston, SC, where I have just wrapped up a Liberty Fund conference on Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America and Edith Wharton's Ethan Frome and The Age of Innocence. The selections are interesting in that they pair a Frenchman who was fascinated by America with an American who was fascinated by France. Naturally much of the conversation analyzed Euro-American and more specifically Franco-American comparisons.

I was reminded of a Le Monde editorial (English translation here) from a few weeks ago. Titled "Should U.S. Americans instead call themselves United Statesians?", the article questions the "imprecision" of the monicker "American" as applied to nationals of the U.S.A. Ultimately the editorial promotes replacing "American" with "United Statesian."

What is the proper term to refer to those of you who live in the United States of America? The word "American" is so deeply embedded in your nation's identity that it may seem curious to you that there could be any discussion about it, but some people - in Latin America, for example - find it offensive, while others, including some in France, simply find it imprecise.

The Franco filiation with lingistic purity is cool with me. It's in fact so pervasive as to border on the cliche. Which is also cool with me. But this editorial is imprecise in some basic and very impure ways. The editorialists were forced to defend themselves.

When we published a note on our language blog defending the use of États-Uniens [United Statesians]--"the word is neither pretty nor musical, but it answers a certain need"-- we had an outpouring of responses. They ranged from absolute opposition to the word (because of its supposed anti-Americanism, its ugliness, its snobbishness, its sarcastic tone, its usefulness only for academics - and because it sounds like space aliens) to enthusiastic approval, notably as a counter to the "imperialist" appropriation of a whole continent by one country's ethnonym.

Obviously they argue that "American" is unfairly ascribed to people of the U.S. at the expense of other nationals on the American continents. The subtext, in my opinion, is that Le Monde suggests "United Statesians" precisely because it is neither pretty nor musical. But that is an unfalsifiable opinion.

What is clear is that the editorialists completely ignore Mexico, whose official name is los Estados Unidos Mexicanos. Linguistic perfectionists that they are--and Mexican immigrants to the USA that their cartoon defends--the French editorialitsts have simply forgotten that the United States of America are not the only "United States" in the world. (They have only to look at the blue and gold EU flag to recognize this.)

Overall the article is vapid but good natured and probably worth the five minutes reading. Here it is again.

HT: Watching America